Waste collection has become a service that people have come to rely on in their residences and in their places of work. Residential waste collection, conducted by a municipality, occurs on “garbage day”, when residents place their waste receptacles at the curb for collection by a waste-collection vehicle. Waste collection in apartment and condominium buildings and commercial and industrial facilities occurs when a waste-collection vehicle collects waste from a dumpster.
Generally speaking, the process of waste collection comprises picking up a waste receptacle, moving it to the hopper or bin of a waste-collection vehicle, dumping the contents of the waste receptacle into the hopper or bin of the waste-collection vehicle, and then returning the waste receptacle to its original location.
The waste-collection process places demands on waste-collection operators, in order to achieve efficiencies in a competitive marketplace. These efficiencies can be found in terms of labor costs, waste-collection capacity, waste-collection speed, etc. Even minor savings in the time required to pick up a single waste receptacle can represent significant economic savings when realized over an entire waste-collection operation.
One area of interest with respect to improving collection speed (i.e. reducing waste-collection time) is the automation of waste-receptacle pick-up. Traditionally, a waste-collection vehicle would be operated by a team of at least two waste-collection personnel. One person would drive the waste-collection vehicle from one location to the next (e.g. from one house to the next), and then stop the vehicle while the other person (or persons) would walk to the location of the waste receptacle, manually pick up the waste receptacle, carry it to the waste-collection vehicle, dump the contents of the waste receptacle into the waste-collection vehicle, and then return the waste receptacle to the place from where it was first picked up.
This process has been improved by the addition of a controllable mechanical arm mounted to the waste-collection vehicle. The arm is moveable based on joystick operation of a human operator. As such, the waste-collection vehicle could be driven within close proximity of the waste receptacle, and the arm could be deployed through joystick control in order to grasp, lift, and dump the waste receptacle.
Further improvements on the arm system have included the automatic or computer-assisted recognition of a waste receptacle. U.S. Pat. No. 5,215,423 to Schulte-Hinsken discloses a camera system for determining the spatial position of five reflective marks that have been previously attached to a garbage can. Due to the properties and geometric pattern of the five reflected marks, the pattern of the reflected marks can be distinguished from the natural environment and therefore easily detected by the camera. However, Schulte-Hinsken fails to teach a solution for detecting an un-marked and textureless garbage can in a natural environment, which may contain highly textured elements, such as foliage.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,762,461 to Frohlingsdorf discloses an apparatus for picking up a trash receptacle comprising a pickup arm that includes sensors within the head of the arm. Frohlingsdorf discloses that an operator can use a joystick to direct an ultrasound transmitter/camera unit towards a container. In other words, the operator provides gross control of the arm using the joystick. When the arm has been moved by the operator into sufficiently-close proximity, a fine-positioning mode of the system is evoked, which uses the sensors to orient the head of the arm for a specific mechanical engagement with the container. Frohlingsdorf relies on specific guide elements attached to a container in order to provide a specific mechanical interface with the pickup arm. As such, Frohlingsdorf does not provide a means of identifying and locating various types of containers.
Accordingly, the problem of efficiently identifying and locating various types of containers within a natural environment remains unsolved.
There is therefore a need for systems and methods for detecting and picking up a waste receptacle that address the inefficiencies found in the state of the art.